Vertical organic transistors are semiconductor components with three electrodes. Organic molecules, carbon compounds and also polymers are in particular used as semiconducting layers. The component has a plurality of planar layers lying one above the other, which are manufactured on a substrate. As the currents in the component flow perpendicularly to the functional layers and thus also to the substrate, it is termed a vertical component.
The following tasks or functions are intended for the vertical organic transistor: Amplifying currents and/or voltages, electrical switches in order to control the current flow through downstream components, carrying out a logical operation in combination with a plurality of components and a very wide range of tasks of analogue signal processing.
One advantage of organic transistors with vertical current flow lies in the small length between the electrodes which can be set very precisely by means of the vapour deposition of materials in a vacuum. As a result, the time which a charge carrier requires for traversing the organic semiconductor is reduced. High switching speeds thus result, which are required for example for the active control of screens with organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs).
In addition, due to the small dimensions of a few 100 nanometres, even at small voltages, which typically lie below 5 V, very high electrical fields are achieved. High current densities are created in the component as a result of this, in order to bring a downstream OLED to an application-relevant brightness. Furthermore, OLEDs are likewise constructed such that the currents flow vertically to the substrate. OLEDs and vertical organic transistors are of the same architecture and therefore suitable to be processed on top of one another in one production process. This leads to a higher packing density and a higher proportion of the surface of a screen which can contribute to the emission of information.
A vertical organic transistor is known from the document US 2010/0213447 A1, in which a central electrode is formed as a continuous layered body which contains an insulating metal compound and metal particles which are distributed in the insulating compound.
An organic semiconductor component is disclosed in the document U.S. Pat. No. 6,884,093 B2, in which a central electrode is formed in an organic layered arrangement with a conductive lattice material.
A method for producing a permeable base transistor is described in the document U.S. Pat. No. 6,774,052 B2, in which a base layer is deposited on a semiconductor substrate and a semiconductor layer grows on the base layer, wherein the base layer comprises metallic nanotubes.
Vertical organic transistors are furthermore known per se for example from the following documents: Nakayama et al., Appl. Phys. Lett., 2006, 88, Cheng et al., Org. Electron., 2009, 10, Watanabe et al., Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., 2006, 45, Fujimoto et al., Appl. Phys. Lett., 2005, 87.